Oh, @RagingBull? Do tell! You have a plan?
leaving_quietly
JoinedPosts by leaving_quietly
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39
How Would Your Being Disfellowshipped Affect You?
by minimus inwould you care?.
would there be any repercussions?.
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39
How Would Your Being Disfellowshipped Affect You?
by minimus inwould you care?.
would there be any repercussions?.
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leaving_quietly
I worry more how my disfellowshipping would effect my love ones.
This is how I feel, too. I'd lose contact with family, and friends. But I don't have a lot of JW friends anyway. I KNOW a lot of JWs, but that doesn't mean we're friends. No one calls me unless they want something, so it's no great loss there with a handful of exceptions. However, I do worry about the effect on my family. I think it would be like losing someone in death to them.
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48
When I decided to no longer turn in time...
by SG098 inbeing my 1st post i figured i should relate a personal experience.
a few months ago i decided to stop reporting time.
i'm mentally out of this cult now but still trapped because of family.
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leaving_quietly
Oh, and welcome to the board!
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48
When I decided to no longer turn in time...
by SG098 inbeing my 1st post i figured i should relate a personal experience.
a few months ago i decided to stop reporting time.
i'm mentally out of this cult now but still trapped because of family.
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leaving_quietly
Real-time reactions....
What does the widow's mite have to do with turning in field service time????
Consequences???!?!!?
No one sees my report except the elders, so how in the world would the congregation be affected if I don't turn mine in?
Stuck on the two coins, huh?
Why does the faithful slave accept 15 minutes? That's the crux of the matter, right? Who is accepting the "time"?
Oh, wow... they pulled the main apostate question out only 10 minutes in. Wow.
Twisting the "mother" and "father" stuff. Ugh.
"Loyalty to Jehovah's organization." Yup. It's all about that.
"Increase your service, you increase your joy." Hmm.
"He [Jehovah] needs your time."
"How are you going to have faith in Jesus if you aren't doing what his brothers ask you to do?... They get their direction from Jehovah and Jesus." Really? Flip-flopping doctrines?
"It's not a measure of who's doing what. If that's the case we'd have publisher-of-the-month. We would announce this stuff." Ummm... can anyone say: Pioneer? or Auxiliary Pioneer? And we DO announce them!!!!
"It gives us a feel for how you're doing, where your heart is, where your struggles are."
Elder 2: "You're a family member... you can't get rid of those." Elder 1: "I'll beat my dad in the head." (What was THAT comment about???)
"Be careful how you feel... we don't have to feel." Huh?
Pornography is normal, but turning in time is not? Turning in time is worse than pornography??!?!?!? What???
Apostates = "modern thinkers" Funny!
Wow, the double-speak is incredible. You're not out of line for thinking it, but you are for acting on it.
"We shouldn't think." Hahahahaha!!!!
99% of it is right? What about that illustration of one drop of poison in a glass of water?
I noted not a single scripture was read when "counseling" you. Of course, you noted that, too.
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22
My logic and emotions are in a turmoil. Need specific help please
by stuckinarut2 ini am still in, and as my name says "stuckinarut"...now i know it is not the truth, i know it for a fact...but im so messed up with a wash of hundreds of thoughts that i cant seem to get my head in order.. i thought i had my head clear and my 'sh1t together' so to speak....but ..... im sure you know what i mean?
when there are so many reasons and facts proving ttatt, but if asked to make a list in bullet points now, i would get so overwhelmed....i just dont know where to start.
i feel like i would be like a balloon let go flying around the room in all directions trying to 'spew' out the facts!.
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leaving_quietly
I have a private account on Google Drive that's not associated to any of my email addresses. Only I know about it. I use a browser that deletes history on exist. I use that account for my notes regarding TTATT and some other personal things. One of the things I've done is created a list of doctrines with four other columns (in a spreadsheet):
Doctrine | Believe | Don't Believe | Undecided | Notes
I list the doctrine, then put an X in the Believe, Don't Believe or Undecided column, then I add very brief notes to it.
I have another document that is simply a rambling of various things I've come across. This document is simply a list of "things", followed by notes about those things. Notes are usually WT articles, parallel Bible verses or Greek/Hebrew meainings. This is my main "proof" document. It's currently 26 pages long.
I have other documents that are "word studies". These are a single words (or variants) and all the scriptures in the Bible that contains that word. Nothing more. This is a hugely-eye-opening thing. For example, a study on "baptism" (including baptize, baptizing, baptized, baptisms, etc.). Very eye-opening. From this simply Bible-only view, we can deduce that baptisms were not dependent on hour and hours and months and months of studying. There's a few other things that can be deduced this way.
Organizing your thoughts in some fashion is beneficial because you can go back and review it from time to time, and even add to/edit it as necessary.
This is what I've done and what works for me for now. I'm working on another document that will be more topical with a table of contents, more like a small book. I haven't touched it in awhile, but have been meaning to get back to it. It will address core doctrines with only WT references.
It takes time, but getting these things down in writing for myrself helps me to organize my own thoughts and to reason even further on things.
That's my method. Thought I'd share.
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79
Your final WTF? Moment!
by restrangled init was a long time coming for me.....when i read about the extened generations, after being raised on1914 being the be all end all, and millions would never die....that was the end.
i was part of the 1975 fiasco, the 6 month only truth book studies, suffered through a disifellowshipping and their version of a rewind.
i finally am free and hope others can eventually look in instead of inside looking out!
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leaving_quietly
I don't think I've yet had a final WTF moment. I remember my first one, though. I was researching marital separation because my own marriage was (and still is) in a pretty bad state. I wanted to know the scripturally valid reasons for divorce and separation. I already knew what the WT said on the topic because I was an elder at the time. I could find zero backing from the scriptures on their three reasons for separation.
Next was the "overlapping generations".
Next came quotes from secular sources without stating who those sources were, and the infamous ellipses that were continually inserted. Once finding the sources, I could read for myself the quotes in context. There were many WTF moments there.
Next came reading the Bible itself. Cover to cover. Finding out what the Bible said about many, many subjects was eye-opening. I learned how to detect "cherry-picking" with this exercise.
Next came various word studies. Thanks to technology nowadays, one can easily find out what the Bible has to say about a particular word, such as "faith" or "salvation" or "paradise". This led to quite a bit of research using the Kingdom Interlinear and Emphatic Diaglott as well as online research tools, such as biblehub.com. This also let to me discovering they did indeed change the NWT to fit their theology despite their claims otherwise.
1914 fell quickly as the entire doctrine is based on an assumption that Daniel's vision has a second fulfillment, that there is some link between the word "times" in Daniel 4 and Luke 21:24, that Jesus was talking about the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon (when the Greek word for "will be" trodden is in the future tense), and that those times actually amounted to 2,520 solar years.
Other major doctrines fell, too. 144,000 only as kings and priests. 144,000 only going to heaven. "New scrolls". Forbidding to eat the bread and drink the wine. The list goes on.
Like someone else here said, I pulled on a thread, and the tapestry started unweaving quickly.
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39
My Letter To the Watchtower
by AiAi inthis is an exact copy of my letter to the watchtower.
it never recieved a reply (i did not include 'attn writing committee' in the address however).
please keep in mind that when i wrote this i had just started my intensive research into their beliefs/history, and despite my agressive tone i really did expect a satisfactory answer.
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leaving_quietly
marked
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400 Million Atoms Know What to do at the same time
by seekchristonly init's claimed it takes 400 million atoms to become a single strand of dna.
how do the atoms know.
3. what order.
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leaving_quietly
"Why is the sky blue"
Best answer I've heard to this (non-scientific, of course), is from the old sit-com, Night Court.
Crazy man in courtroom: "Why is the sky blue?"
Judge Harry Stone: "Because if it were green, we wouldn't know where to stop mowing."
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New Light: 3rd heaven?
by problemaddict inforgive me if this has been covered.
last year i did a synopsis of the convention, but my wife decided she did not want to go this year (thats a win), so i didn't either.
a good friend of mine however tipped me to something in david splanes talk.. its pretty mild, but seems a bit wacky.
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leaving_quietly
Considering what Paul said about knowing a man who had that experience 14 years previously, most believe Paul was talking about himself. I'm not so sure this is the case. Makes me wonder if he was talking about John. We know from Revelation that John did have this experience. He was transferred to the heavens. But something else in Revelation leads me to wonder this. At the very beginning of Revelation, John was told this:
"So write down the things you saw, and the things that are, and the things that will take place after these." - Rev 1:19
What Paul writes is unusual because he typically had no qualms about talking about himself. But in this instance, he said, "I know a man in union with Christ". Leads me to believe he was talking about someone else. Could he have been talking about John? Could John have had his vision that was written in what we call Revelation many years before and was simply told not to write them down at that time? It's possible, I suppose.
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August vacations cancelled
by wandasoo inhad a vacation planned for august, but got the rug pulled out from under my feet.
hubby said he wanted to go in september, but gave me no reason.
i finally told him i knew he had to pioneer in august.
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leaving_quietly
We have a wedding anniversay in August, I'm sure that will be put in the back burner too
If you were a guy, I'd ask if you were married to my wife. Same exact mindset over hear, but gender reversal.
My last anniversary got put on the back burner for a regular ol' mid-week meeting. I was very upset. I, as the head of the household, protested quite a bit, but she, as the REAL head of the household (yeah, nevermind that headship arrangement stuff), decided that the meeting was more important. She has no trouble missing meeting because of a certain time of the month, but has a huge problem missing it for a once-a-year event that is supposed to be important to both of us. Obviously not. I found out right then and there exactly how she felt about the marriage. This became a real sore spot for months.